


you'll leave them all one day

by My5tic_Lali



Series: you'll thank me one day [6]
Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: AU, Angst, Gen, Headcanon-heavy, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, set pre-Back Cover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:28:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25132390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My5tic_Lali/pseuds/My5tic_Lali
Summary: After years and years of not knowing why he was the only one to have the Sight, Master finally understood.It hit him late one night.  The castle was quiet like it only got after midnight, after Ira and Invi finally left the library, yawning after a day of practice and more study, after Luxu and Ava got too tired to keep chatting, after Aced stopped cleaning and practicing, after Gula finally returned from setting up pranks and sneaking around the castle.  This was the time when Master did his best thinking, when everything outside was still enough that he could distinguish what he was Seeing from what he was seeing.  This was the hour when he usually wrote in the Book, sorting through his memories for the things that hadn’t happened yet and figuring out when and where they would occur.  It was one of his favorite times: when he got to connect the dots and fill in the picture even further, the future drawing closer as it got clearer.And on this night, the dots that he connected brought his heart to a standstill.//+ BONUS!! how Master left his apprentices
Series: you'll thank me one day [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1097535
Comments: 3
Kudos: 19





	you'll leave them all one day

**Author's Note:**

> (Alternative title:   
> _weep for yourself my man, you’ll never be what is in your heart  
>  weep little lion man, you’re not as brave as you were at the start  
> rate yourself and rake yourself  
> take all the courage you have left  
> wasted on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head  
> but it was not your fault but mine/and it was your heart on the line  
> I really fucked it up this time  
> didn’t I, my dear?  
> didn’t I, my dear?  
>  **tremble for yourself my man, you know that you have Seen all this before**  
>  tremble little lion man, you’ll never settle any of your scores  
> your grace is wasted in your face  
> your boldness stands alone among the wreck_)

Nox used to hate it.

Used to hate the staring, the whispers, the way the other kids had never wanted to play with him, the confusion that resulted from not knowing if what he was seeing was real. Sometimes, late at night, sitting alone in his house, staring up at the sky, Nox wished that all the visions and dreams had never happened to him, almost wished he’d never been born. It had never helped him, anyway—no matter that the healers always said his eye could only be the result of magic, which meant he was _special_ , said that he had a _great destiny_ , said with as much sincerity as they could muster before the healers got too uncomfortable making eye contact with his cat-like pupils and sent him on his way.

Sometimes he thought he deserved the whispers. He knew he was weird, knew something was wrong with him. Sometimes he saw things that weren’t there, people who didn’t exist, had hallucinations of magic weapons and black coats. In his dreams, people called him “Master of Masters.” And it sounded nice, it really did—but it didn’t exist. Nox was barely a teenager, and he knew it wasn’t real, none of it. When he was a kid, he used to play pretend that he could grab at thin air and have a weapon appear in his hand, used to act on the tricks that his eyes played on him.

But that was just a fantasy. More often, late at night, sitting alone in his house, staring up at the cable cars silhouetted against the stars, Nox wished that all the weirdness about his eye and his dreams would just disappear.

That is, until the day that the monsters attacked.

It wasn’t until he saw them—the same black figures with jerky movements, the same claws and glowing yellow eyes that flashed before they tore people’s hearts out—that Nox knew that everything he had seen was real.

///

He was woken by screams.

From outside, a fire had started. Smoke clogged his nose and he hastily ran to the window, blinking away his uneasy sleep. The street outside his window, always so calm and pristine with its white marble and flowerpots beneath each window of the houses across the road, was being overrun by small, vicious black figures. Their yellow eyes gleamed hungrily as they tottered to and fro, claws extended, guided somehow toward the open windows and scratching against the closed doors until they fell, exposing families, shopkeepers—people Nox had known his whole life. The creatures were coming from the docks—rising up out of the water, dripping darkness, indistinguishable from the night sky if not for the lack of stars. A fire had broken out in a house down the street and was spreading closer—a couple people were running from the monsters, many were woken too late and their screams joined the rest as their homes were overrun.

Nox blinked, and blinked again. It was too loud, too real—this had to be a dream. He was seeing things again. Yet another reason why he was insane; why else would he dream something so horrid? So terrifying?

He walked out into the street anyway. He was hardly conscious of moving. The creatures seemed familiar. Their jerky, uncoordinated movements were somehow endearing, he thought. If only they weren’t attacking helpless civilians, they’d be cute.

The marble was firm beneath his feet. The smoke was harsh against his throat. His ears rang.

_It certainly is a vivid dream_ , Nox thought. But usually the dreams ended happily, so he kept walking. The people streaming past him, running with their spouses or children in tow, felt far away. Their fear was all too real, though. He felt it start to thrum in his own veins.

He stopped walking. Maybe he should run away too. This dream was worse than the others. He didn’t usually have control in the dreams, but now he did—he could turn and run too.

But before he could, a rush of movement above him blotted out everything, and Nox started, looking up as one of the black creatures leapt for him.

And then, he realized:

He had seen this exact moment before—a monster leaping up in the air, limbs flailing, claws extended, coming straight for him.

Nox flinched behind his hands, his fingers curling into fists subconsciously, only… only a weapon appeared, instead. The monster fell straight onto the Blade, scattering into black specks as it did, and Nox, chest heaving, stared down at the weapon in his hand. He had seen it before—but he’d thought it was a hallucination, like everything else.

Now that he thought about it, he had seen _this_ before—the people running, falling beneath the black claws, his home crawling with monsters.

_It was real._ What he saw had _always been real_ —just not yet, not real at the moment he’d seen it. Nox looked back and forth between the scene around him and the weapon he held.

People were screaming—people he’d known his whole life, who’d laughed at him and his faraway eyes, who’d given him an extra serving of bread because of his skinny limbs, who’d taken ten minutes on random days to teach him to read—and running from the black creatures—creatures he’d seen many times, their claws poised to rip and steal and kill—and Nox, for the first time in his life, felt _right_.

It is time, something inside him seemed to say, his whole body thrumming and alive and cold after this realization. He’d had a dream once where he saw his hand offering the weapon which he now held to a young boy, and Nox remembered the words he’d dreamt: In your hand, take this Key…

“So long as you have the makings,” Nox whispered, and stood taller. “Then, through this simple act of taking…”

The monsters were still coming, more and more. They moved with blocky movements, yellow eyes unfocused, bumbling into each other and walls as they lurched after the fleeing townspeople.

“Its wielder you will one day be.”

For the first time in what seemed like a long time, Nox felt a smile break across his face.

///

His swings were not the refined slashes and parries that he’d had dreams about, and his hallucinations had never managed to impart how _tired_ his muscles would feel after wading through monster after monster. No magic sparked from his strange weapon, but the monsters fell as he stabbed them, as he wildly swung the blade through them, and slowly, he cleared the street. Slowly, he looked around and realized the flow had stopped; the waters were calming, and the screams had lessened. Guardsmen ran up and down the streets beside this one, doing his same work but much less efficiently with their weapons, and Nox eventually realized that his neighbors had stopped running.

He turned to look at the lingering clusters of people, breathing hard. They met his electric blue eyes, maybe for once realizing that something scarier existed than the strangeness of their hue, and Nox felt their awe overtake him.

_It was real._ Nox had always been right, had never been crazy. He hadn’t woken up; the blade was still in his hands, and judging by their stares, his neighbors could see it too.

“Nox,” said one of them, hoarsely. “What was that? Where did those monsters come from?”

He blinked at them. “Uh,” he said back, eloquently.

Then he shook his head, and took a deep breath. In his dreams, Nox was verbose, was carefree and intelligent. “When I figure it out,” he said, “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

It hit him all over again, and the tiredness inside him was replaced by burgeoning excitement. He was _going_ to figure it out!

Nox turned away from the crowd.. He had felt cold at the realization of the truth of what he’d seen, but now he felt electrified— _it is real, it’s always been real, there’s so much I’m going to do, I’m going to be the Master of masters, I’m going to save so many people, it is real_ —and he couldn’t stop now. This changed everything.

“Wait, kid!”

Nox looked over his shoulder. It was the baker from down the street, who always kept a close eye on Nox and the other street kids and shooed them away from his precious wares at the slightest provocation.

“Wh-what is that weapon? Where’d you get it?” The baker asked, coughing.

The baker had once promised Nox some coin for doing a courier job, but denied it and sent him packing the next morning when Nox confessed to having had another weird dream.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Nox grabbed the hood of his jacket and pulled it up. It felt safe, comforting. Familiar. “Sadly, it seems that it’s on a need-to-know basis.”

He started walking, the gleaming blade still in his hand. Its weight felt _right_ in a way nothing else ever had. He didn’t know where he was going, but he’d figure it out. That future he’d seen glimpses of—he would go get it. There was so much joy there, so much light, and Nox would bring it to fruition. He’d be there to see it all.

“But what are we supposed to do?” Someone else in the crowd asked, voice small. It echoed through the street of the place which had never been Nox’s home, not really.

Nox didn’t stop, just waved back at them with newfound cheerfulness. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—stop now, now that he was justified in his dreams and visions. He had to go find out what _else_ was true, what others he would save.

“May your heart be your guiding key.” He said it to them, yes, but also to himself.

He left them without a second glance, eyes fixed on the future he now knew was coming.

///

After years and years of not knowing why he was the only one to have the Sight, Master finally understood.

It hit him late one night. The castle was quiet like it only got after midnight, after Ira and Invi finally left the library, yawning after a day of practice and more study, after Luxu and Ava got too tired to keep chatting, after Aced stopped cleaning and practicing, after Gula finally returned from setting up pranks and sneaking around the castle. This was the time when Master did his best thinking, when everything outside was still enough that he could distinguish what he was Seeing from what he was seeing. This was the hour when he usually wrote in the Book, sorting through his memories for the things that hadn’t happened yet and figuring out when and where they would occur. It was one of his favorite times: when he got to connect the dots and fill in the picture even further, the future drawing closer as it got clearer.

And on this night, the dots that he connected brought his heart to a standstill.

Master had Seen many times that at some point in the future, it was just him and Luxu, the boy grown and weary and somehow bitter. Why they were alone, Master had never quite figured out.

But on this night, as Master watched the stars twinkle above Daybreak Town, he Saw something that told him why.

He Saw a dark, stormy desert. Mountains and craters and dustclouds filled the edges of his vision, and a too-bright moon hovered overhead, but what he focused on was the debris.

All around him and Luxu were corpses. Not the physical bodies, but dead, grayed Keyblades. They had fallen where their wielders had, chipped and broken and drained of all magic. Something about the unnatural white glow of the moon overhead told Master that that was where the hearts of these dead wielders had gone.

Luxu trudged through this battlefield—no, this _graveyard_ —steps weighed down by grief and by the Black Box which he tugged behind him. Master could see the Box because every time Luxu stepped, Master’s view swiveled back and forth. For maybe the first time, Master realized that he wasn’t Seeing through his usual view, wasn’t walking beside his apprentice. He never had been, whenever he Saw himself and Luxu.

Luxu stopped, breath quivering. When the kid fell to his knees, the Box thudding to the ground behind him, Master’s view moved again, to look up at Luxu as if he gazed up from the palm of Luxu’s hand. And the kid was crying—Master could see, even in the shadow of Luxu’s black cloak—tears streaking his face and silent sobs shaking through his shoulders. “They’re all gone, Master,” Luxu gasped. “They’re all dead… You can put _that_ in your Book. Kingdom Hearts didn’t even come, but they died for it anyway.

“If this was what everything else was leading up to… If this was what you were hoping for, Master… I-I can’t see how it’ll work out. I always thought you could, that because you knew what was coming you knew it would turn out okay…” Luxu wiped a gloved hand across his face. “But how could _this_ be okay?”

Master blinked, and Luxu’s tear-stained face faded from his Sight.

He was left with the crickets singing under his window, and the faraway stars out of his window.

“I won’t be there.” The words slipped out unconsciously as he realized it.

That was it. That was the missing piece. He’d wondered for so long, how it was that he could See, why it was him.

Magic didn’t come from nothing. It wasn’t sourceless, it wasn’t infinite. It always had an explanation. And the reason for his Sight wasn’t some long-forgotten spell, or some genetic anomaly. Master’s Sight came just like any other magic: a caster.

He scrambled for the paper on his desk, looked wildly around for a pencil. The logistics of how he would _give himself_ Sight were invigorating and terrifying—an energy transfer that would… would take everything. Technically, it was possible, but there would be nothing left of his magic, of _himself_ , after that.

_Except my Eye._

The thought stunned him for a second, but then Master kept scribbling notes as they occurred to him. It would be like a continuous, long-distance spell of communication, except it communicated through time instead of across space. The main problem would be binding it in such a way that it wouldn’t disappear with the rest of him, his existence leeched from the world as his magical life was all consumed in this one final spell. But it _would_ work (it had already worked! Master knew he could do it because he was already reaping the benefits)—his Eye carried forward by Luxu to See the future.

He was so caught up in the logistics of it, that for a while he didn’t grasp what he’d Seen just moments before.

_I won’t be there._

His pencil stopped its frantic scribbling.

_I have to leave them._

In order to give himself the Sight ( _the only reason you’ve gotten this far, the only reason you’re alive today, the reason you have your Keyblade, the reason you found your apprentices, and the reason you’ve even lived this long_ ), he would have to leave his apprentices to the death and destruction that was coming ( _have to leave them to fracture and crack and stumble and fall and try and fail and die, all alone_ ).

Master dropped the pencil, pushed himself back away from his desk. For an indeterminable moment, he just sat there, staring out at nothing. His precious apprentices. Abandoned in the face of all of that.

Finally, he drew in a ragged breath, and stood, unsteady. He crossed to the window, leaning against the sill so he wouldn’t fall. There was a vice around his chest, and his breathing came shorter. He’d somehow never put together these particular pieces of the future. The whole picture seemed clearer, now.

It wasn’t such a pleasant picture.

And suddenly, Master didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to leave, to leave his precious apprentices to face the death and darkness awaiting them. Maybe he could change it. If he didn’t give himself the Sight, if he stayed, he could protect them. He could _change_ the future.

If Master didn’t leave, Ira wouldn’t sit up every night and obsess over the Book until his eyes turned red and his thoughts turned manic, until he collapsed and doubted _himself_ after so long of being told to doubt the Traitor, until Ira died under the onslaught of their apprentices’ Keyblades.

If Master didn’t leave, Aced wouldn’t stumble and fumble his way through a support role that he _could_ succeed at but _wouldn’t_ because of pride, wouldn’t feel betrayed and lose the family he’d worked so hard to join, wouldn’t fight until his limbs refused to continue and finally sit where he was and refuse to fight until Aced fell under countless spells.

If Master didn’t leave, Invi wouldn’t learn to bite her tongue and eavesdrop because she felt she had to, wouldn’t become so wrapped up in her job that she lost sight of herself, wouldn’t make judgements out of anger, wouldn’t go to fight with a heart heavier than the mask Invi wore until the last.

If Master didn’t leave, Gula wouldn’t recede back into the shell he was when Master first met him, wouldn’t turn bitter and distrustful of the people who had become his family, wouldn’t regret it all and scramble to fix things only to make things worse and walk into a fight Gula knew he couldn’t win.

If Master didn’t leave, Ava wouldn’t have to bear the burden of choosing those who would continue, wouldn’t have to watch her Union and family die all around her knowing that she could have saved more, Ava wouldn’t eventually be struck down taking a blow meant for another.

If Master didn’t leave, Luxu wouldn’t have to spend night after night alone with only the whistling wind to accompany him, wouldn’t have to hold himself back from comforting and helping and saving his family, wouldn’t collapse into tears and screams on the bloodied Keyblade Graveyard and ask, over and over again to the Eye in his Keyblade _“Why me, Master? Why did you pick me? Why does it have to be me!”_

His strength left him, and Master sat, hard, on the windowsill, eyes still fixed on the faraway stars. He couldn’t leave them.

_But you will._

But Master had Seen it. So many times he couldn’t count them—Luxu alone, Ira as leader, Invi sneaking, Aced dissatisfied. Gula, distrustful. Ava, torn in two with the weight of choice. If he had Seen it, that meant it would happen. It _had_ to happen. It was already _going_ to happen.

Maybe, if Master had known, if he’d realized sooner, he could’ve stopped it. But they were already so close—the Unions about to be formed, the Book of Prophesies nearly complete, his apprentices all Masters in their own right—and Master knew, down to his core, that even if he didn’t give himself Sight, even if he tried now to change it… it wouldn’t work.

///

Master didn’t sleep that night.

It wasn’t like anyone would see the bags under his reddened eyes, anyway.

_~fin~_

...

**Author's Note:**

> A/N:  
> cool facts:  
> Master's og name is Nox, meaning _night_ in Latin. Real original, I know  
> I wrote like, all of this except the last section back in like 2018 and it took me this long to get inspired enough to finish it oops  
> amount of times I misspelled Luxu’s name: 21  
> varied misspellings of luxu’s name: “luzu” “lusu” “xuxu” “lupu” “lulu” “luux” and, best of all, “xulu”  
> I shouldn’t have written most of this after midnight  
> alternative title from _Little Lion Man_ by Mumford & Sons
> 
> .
> 
> so! yeah this was actually almost all written before kingdom hearts III came out, so it’s not necessarily meant to fit with the revelations regarding the foretellers + luxu and scala ad caelum from that game. I did incorporate scala ad caelum because of the trailers, but other than that this isn’t necessarily supposed to fit with khiii. Maybe someday I’ll write something else about luxu and his journey in light of the revelation at the end of khiii, but today is not that day. also it was _definitely_ written before Dark Road, and I am behind in UX and haven't started Dark Road yet so please don't get on my case about not having Eraqus or Xehanort or any of the new kids in Scala k thanks
> 
> and also I know that this may not be your interpretation of MoM, it’s more likely that he probably deserves judgement and may be the next big bad, but these characters mean so much to me and even if it’s never going to be canon, I can’t help but view the keyblade war as a tragedy on all sides. Maybe I’m just refusing to let MoM be the bad guy and I’m probably all wrong but I can’t let go of these characters so  
> tldr: master isn’t a pure antagonist in my headcanon


End file.
